A helicopter made an emergency water landing about 20 miles off the coast Sunday afternoon, according to a U.S. Coast Guard news release. The pilot, alone in the aircraft, was unharmed. He was taken from the helicopter by a Coast Guard cutter while the helicopter was towed to shore, the release said. The helicopter is equipped with water landing gear, making the emergency landing fairly smooth, said Lt. Jessica Paxton. The privately owned aircraft was traveling between Opa-locka and Nassau, Paxton said.

A helicopter pilot landed on a levee in Everglades Holiday Park on Saturday afternoon after briefly losing contact with an air-traffic-control tower, a fire-rescue official said. The pilot was in communication with North Perry General Aviation Airport and was traveling with one passenger; neither was injured, according to Mike Jachles, spokesman for Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue. The pair did not need medical assistance, but did request a mechanic for the aircraft — and drinking water.

I think that now, weeks since the mortal remains of this generation's most reviled mass-murderer were offered to fish and crustaceans, it's safe to bring up an important Jewish thought that should have occurred to us all in the wake of the operation at Abbottabad. No, nothing to do with its ethical merit or legality; formal procedures and qualms have no place when it comes to removing a clearly dangerous object, animal, or person from the world. Nor is it with regard to the jubilation seen in some places following bin Laden's killing; there are moral grounds for celebrating the demise of evil.

Shining a laser light pointer at an aircraft is a dangerous thing to do, by all accounts. But after two aircraft - including a Sheriff's Office helicopter - were targeted Wednesday night in Palm Beach County , deputies are also pointing out another stark fact: it's a felony. James McDonald, a 52-year-old West Boca man, was reminded of this reality when he was arrested early Thursday after deputies said he flashed a green pointer at the cockpit of a Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office Eagle helicopter just before midnight.

Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. broke ground Tuesday on a new helicopter hangar that some hope will give lift to bigger expansion plans in Palm Beach County. The new hangar will result in at least 14 manufacturing and engineering jobs, said Joe Sikora, director, Florida Assembly and Flight Operations for Sikorsky. The new jobs will pay about $80,000 a year, a spokesman said. Sikorsky, based in Stratford, Conn., now employs about 1,100 workers at the northern Palm Beach County campus off Beeline Highway that it shares with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

A helicopter carrying two Palm Beach County residents to a resort slammed into the side of Blood Mountain in northern Georgia, scattered wreckage hundreds of feet and burned, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report. Adam Reeves, 45, who ran health care and realty companies from his waterfront Jupiter home, and Shelley Zapototsky, a registered nurse from West Palm Beach who worked with Reeves, had left Palm Beach County early on Aug. 2 in Reeves' 2006 Robinson R44 helicopter.

A jet and helicopter will be flying unusual patterns off the Palm Beach County coast between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tuesday for a television commercial. The aerial production has been coordinated with the Federal Aviation Administration and permitted by the county, according to the Palm Beach County Film and Television Commission. The two aircraft will be at an altitude of 1,500 feet about a 1/2-mile offshore for the maneuvers, which are for a television production company videotaping the jetliner for an upcoming commercial presentation, according to the commission's news release.

An unidentified motorist is recovering from non-life threatening injuries suffered in a two-vehicle collision near Lake Worth on Thursday, according to Palm Beach County Fire Rescue. "We had one patient," said Fire Rescue spokesman Steve Delai. "They were trauma-hawked out. " The patient was in stable condition at Delray Medical Center, he said. The accident occurred at the intersection of Lake Worth Road and South Jog Road around 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

A helicopter made a forced landing in Sunrise during the Monday afternoon rush hour but there were no reports of any injuries according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The FWC chopper touched down in an empty field near 3333 Northwest 90th Terrace around 5:30 p.m., Officer Jorge Pino said. "The pilot noticed some smoke coming into the cockpit and he chose the appropriate area to safely set the bird down and he did," he said. FWC Lt. Chris Colon, is a veteran pilot who had one other person aboard the six-seat Bell 206B helicopter but neither he nor the passenger was hurt in the emergency landing, Pino said.

Sikorsky Aircraft unveiled its most powerful, technologically advanced and biggest-load helicopter on Monday in Palm Beach County . The CH-53K was crowned "King Stallion" by the Marine Corps at an event at Sikorky's Development Flight Center in northwestern Palm Beach County . The version currently in use by the military is dubbed the "Super Stallion. " The helicopter is designed to carry 27,000 pounds - three times the load of the current Sikorsky helicopter - which will enable it to move troops and equipment from ship to shore and to higher altitude terrain, more quickly and effectively than before, Sikorsky said.

Plantation Police released surveillance video Thursday of a man seen robbing a hobby store that's been hit before. The video shows the suspect pacing around the Maniacs Hobby Complex at 7676 Peters Road on Nov. 26. He grabbed a $1,300 remote control helicopter and ran out the door, the video showed. He was described as standing about six-feet tall, with a medium build and a light complexion. He was wearing a black T-shirt, black shorts and a green baseball cap. On Aug. 12, a man grabbed two remote control trucks off the shelf and ran out the front door to a waiting car with Georgia license plates.

A woman is recovering in the hospital after falling in an elevator aboard a cruise ship on Wednesday, officials said. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crew hoisted the injured woman, 52, off the deck of the Carnival Sensation after she suffered injuries to both her legs. It happened around 1:30 p.m. when the ship was near the Palm Beach Sea Buoy, officials said. Carnival personnel called the Coast Guard station in Miami to report the fall and a helicopter was dispatched to airlift the woman to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, the Coast Guard said.

This is a new modern world with new media. Our messages come through loud and strong. We no longer have to wait till it disseminates through paper and print. Shortly after an article is published, like a stream flowing down hill, the Internet and other electronic media may take the printed page and send it on. That is what happened to my article, My Prayers for Yom Kippur. Originally published in the South Florida Jewish Journal it traveled, including my thoughts on the fate of the Long Beach Hospital.

Another Goldilocks intruder found a home that was just right for som play time. On Wednesday evening the caretakers of a home called deputies after they had stopped by to the St. Augustine residence and had noticed the door was open while the homeowners were out of town, according to an arrest affidavit from the St. Johns County Sheriff's office. When the responding deputy arrived and checked out the backyard, the deputy noticed a man, later identified as Jason Lee Vickery, 23, and ordered him to stop.

A West Palm Beach man is in jail after deputies say he shined a laser into a Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office helicopter. It was Sunday at about 9:30 p.m. when the pilot of the helicopter and another deputy on patrol about 800 feet above Woodbridge Lakes saw the light. The deputies used an infrared camera and spotted three men, one later identified as David Mansfield Jr., 30, of unincorporated West Palm Beach, standing in a driveway. Patrol cars went to the 1600 block of Woodbridge Lakes Circle where they talked with several young children who pointed up to Mansfield's apartment.

- When I told Chuck I was sweating, he said it was probably best we head back. It has been said of Chuck Aaron that "he makes flipping a helicopter look as easy as flipping a pancake. " That's a true statement. You just move your hand a little. But it takes way more guts to flip a helicopter. Only two machines in this hemisphere are capable, and Aaron, 64, is the only guy who can fly them - one of three people in the world, he says. He is performing in the Fort Lauderdale Air Show this weekend.